Since the camera is one of the most used features on a smartphone today, we’re continuously working to improve our camera software. Having recently launched the Fairphone 4, we’d love to hear your feedback on the camera so far and to tell us where you think there’s still some room for improvement.
Please share your thoughts in this survey before Friday, the 11th March 2022:
Well, I’m not really using the camera. I want my photos to be geotagged, but the geotagging option turns and stays off when I switch off location services. Very inconvenient.
Whitebalance is unneccessarily limited - only goes down to 2000K. OpenCamera goes down to 1000K giving me still good colors with candlelight (~ 1900K) or my living room lights (1800K).
Hey Cookienator. Thanks for your comment. Have you had the time to deliver that feedback in the survey? That would help us enormously to process it. Thanks so much for putting the time.
A huge thank you to everyone who has taken the time to fill out the survey so far.
Only 5 more days to go, so I just wanted to pop a little reminder here. The survey takes less than 5 minutes to fill in, so if you would still like to share some feedback on the Fairphone 4 camera, please do so before Monday. Thanks very much!
Hi everyone, a little note that we have now extended the deadline to Friday, 11th March (end of day). So if you wanted to have your say earlier, but didn’t find the time…here’s your chance!
Our team would really find sample photos most helpful, so if you’re able to share some test shots that would really be appreciated. Thanks again!
Maybe introduce a special tag for people to use when they upload their pictures on social media. I already saw that #shotonfairphone is something FP advocates on Instagram. But if you add #shotonfairphone4 to that then you may continuously get a feed of what kind of pictures people take with that FP model and how that looks.
By the way, could you please update the top post to this new deadline? New users then know they can still leave feedback. The deadline in the top post is still in February.
New here!
I bought my FP4 about 10 days ago, so missed the survey deadline. I like to view my pics on a Mac screen and the FP4 pics’ resolution is insufficient for this. I’ve come from a 6-year old LG4 with a 16MP camera and I’m really missing it. As LG don’t make phones anymore couldn’t Fairphone just licence that module from LG?
Apart from the low quality images from the main camera, the video default is poor, over-saturated and can’t replay more than 10 seconds on my Mac.
The 48MP stills option is unable to handle light situations with sky and water and I get an exposure blow-out. For the few times I tried to use it, it also froze the app when being left on for about 20-30 seconds. I avoid it completely now.
I downloaded Open Camera and HD Camera apps for comparison. Both produce similar results - sometimes better, sometimes worse - but at least allow you to adjust JPEG ‘quality’ and allow you to select 100% which gives file sizes about twice the size of the FP ones. I can’t find a menu option that allows me increase the ‘quality’ on the FP4. If this was unhidden and selectable I might at least be able to squeeze a little more resolution out. It’d be nice to have the option anyway.
The advantage of the FP4 app is that it takes the picture almost immediately whereas the two downloaded apps both pause for about a second before taking the image.
The ‘Pro’ option. Well no-one is really expecting it to mean ‘professional’ but so far I’m underwhelmed. I shoot nearly always in 16.9. I haven’t found a way of minimising the controls which means they cover about a third of the right side of the image on-screen. So you can’t use a finger to make the focal point anywhere on the right third of the screen. If there is a way to minimise the pro controls please let me know!
I can see there are other threads about unofficial camera apps and informal ways of loading them up, but that’s all way over my head. Any other ways people have found to make a decent camera out of this phone would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, tom
Moritzw, thanks for posting. I think your camera is working very differently to mine! I attach two evening shots, with the cargo boat for time reference. One taken on the 48MP and one on the standard camera. The standard camera has the light about right. The 48MP is blown out and all the other shots taken on the coast came out like this
Cheers, tom
No. I got the phone yesterday. I’m just starting to try the camera out.
But generally, indoor shooting in low light is always a bit of a challenge. You can’t expect that to be perfect everytime. It also depends quite a bit on the photographer.
I have a real camera that I’ll use if I need high quality shots indoors. And even with that, you have to know what you’re doing.
For smartphones this hasn’t been a problem for almost 10 years The software defined camera features are even on mid range phones good enough to take decent pictures indoors in low light. Of course you don’t buy the Fairphone for the camera, it’s not a Pixel/iPhone. But would be great if they at least align to the level of mid range phones
Well, you can’t round the laws of physics. For a blur-free photograph, you need a sufficient fast shutter speed. And in low light, that means a high ISO setting. And noise-free high ISO requires a certain pixel size on the sensor. Smartphones have extremely small sensors, compared to real cameras. Quantum efficiency limits how small the sensor can be but there are physical limits to that too. It helps with a faster lens but much faster than F/1.8 is hardly practical in a smartphone.
You’ll be amazed what a Pixel/iPhone can do The difference of what a Fairphone can shoot and my old Pixel is extreme. It was just aim and shoot with the Pixel, no fancy night mode. Then the difference would be even bigger.
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